On Tuesday, June 14, 2011 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing entitled "Achieving Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending," as part of the committee's mission to bring genuine reform to the federal bureaucracy. The hearing included testimony by Earl Devaney, Chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

Despite the availability of technology to track federal spending and program performance, the existing platforms utilized by government agencies do not yield accurate and accessible reporting of information to taxpayers. In fact, USASpending.gov, the site required by law under the authority of the Office of Management and Budget, was only 35 percent accurate in fiscal year 2009. Moreover, the multiple and incongruent formats of various federal spending databases make comparison and analysis almost impossible, even to those with advanced degrees in accounting.

While the committee continues to have concerns about the effectiveness and prudence of President Obama's trillion-dollar stimulus, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board has provided a commendable model of transparency. In the last two years, the American people have seen that reporting by grant, loan, and contract recipients is truer and timelier than the out-of-date model of agency reporting. In fact, errors that have been discovered in the data at Recovery.gov are due, in large part, to flawed information sent by federal agencies.

The committee will consider necessary reforms to bring an unprecedented level of openness and transparency to federal spending. Furthermore, the committee will evaluate the promise that data standardization offers for greater accountability to taxpayers.